What is ethnicity?

Ethnicity is an identity that a group of people with similar physical and mental traits share due to common heritage and culture. On the other hand, nationality is an identity shared by a group of people who are legal citizens of the same place, and race is an identity within a group of people that have a common ancestor. Race is typically distinguished by skin color, but skin color is not always neatly divided into categories, and thus it is difficult to categorize people clearly into ethnicities and races.

These identities are often a source of identity but also a source of conflict. Being in a community where there is a common, shared ethnicity, called an ethnic neighborhood, can create a sense of place and belongingness. Immigrants often form ethnic neighborhoods in foreign countries because they feel a connection to their own culture within a foreign place, and these ethnic neighborhoods are sometimes named after the ethnic group-- such as Greektown in Chicago or Chinatown in San Francisco. These ethnic neighborhoods have a lot of elements within it that represent its culture; for example, Chinatown usually has restaurants with Chinese letters on its banner and lanterns or gateways symbolizing the Chinese culture.

However, ethnicity can also be a source of conflict. For example, international borders are not divided by ethnic groups, and this leads to conflict. In some places, multiple ethnicities are placed in the same country. In this case, an ethnic cleansing or genocide can occur, where an ethnic majority will try to eliminate or dominate the minority, and sometimes causing the near extinction of a particular culture. In other cases, ethnicities are split by international borders, and its people are placed in two different countries without a unifying country. Thus, ethnicities can cause a lot of problems, particularly due to international borders that do not take ethnic distributions into account. Furthermore, racial problems are also prevalent across the world, where particular races are discriminated against for their skin color due to racism and xenophobia.